Amir

Lake Howell's Amir Haghighi knows there are a lot of people that don't like him.And he knows that a lot of times his aggressive behavior on the court turns people off.But Haghighi also knows he's made considerable strides over the past season to curb his bad behavior.And while he may never win everybody over, he figures all he can do is continue to try while improving his game.''I've said publicly that I made mistakes and I have continued to try and improve my image,'' said Haghighi.''But I think there are just going to be some people that will never give me the benefit of the doubt.

Orlando Sounds of kittens meowing 50 feet off the ground led to a dramatic rescue Tuesday at the Amway Center construction site. Police Officer Amir Paymayeshuio went up in a lift to retrieve the kittens, which were stranded atop an 8-inch metal beam. Police speculate the animals must have been inside the beam when it was hoisted skyward by crane to be welded in place. The person who initially spotted the young felines adopted them, police said.

As a freshman, Amir Haghighi was a nightmare on the tennis court. He was rude to his coach and disrespectful to his opponents.He could care less about his teammates, and he talked trash as if he were playing pickup one-on-one on a New York City street basketball court. He broke racquets out of frustration routinely, as if snapping a pencil in disgust.His father got so mad at Haghighi about his attitude one time while driving home after a match, he threw his son's racquet out the car window.

The Kite Runner is an elegiac, redemptive tale of two Afghan boys torn apart by cowardice, brought back together by honor. If there is any claim to "epic" in this film of Khaled Hosseini's novel, it is its vivid depiction of "Islamo-fascism," a before-and-after picture of Afghanistan that shows a land where civilization came to an abrupt end. Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi) is a wealthy, sensitive boy who likes to "make up stories." Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada, an open-faced wonder) is the son of a family servant and Amir's best friend, his protector.

JERUSALEM -- The Israeli Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin will be allowed to father children through artificial insemination. Yigal Amir and his wife had petitioned the court for the right to bear children. Amir, serving a life sentence without parole for the 1995 assassination, married Larissa Trimbobler by proxy in 2004.

The trial of Yigal Amir, the religious Jew charged with murdering Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, is due to begin today but his attorneys say they are not ready to enter a plea. Amir, 25, has admitted in courtroom appearances to gunning down the Israeli leader in November to halt Israeli-Arab peace moves but later said he did not intend to kill Rabin. Legal scholars said the court, which already postponed proceedings last month to let defense lawyers review the evidence, would probably order Amir to enter a plea.

Israel's Cabinet adopted the official report on Yitzhak Rabin's assassination Sunday while newspapers said a secret appendix leveled fresh charges against the agency responsible for protecting the prime minister.The inquiry into the Nov. 4 assassination by right-wing Israeli Yigal Amir concluded Thursday that the Shin Bet security service ignored ample evidence that a Jewish militant might try to kill the Israeli leader.The Haaretz newspaper said Sunday that a secret 118-page appendix to the report found the Shin Bet had lost control over informer Avishai Raviv, who either didn't know or didn't report Amir's assassination plans.

Even as guards hauled him away to a life behind bars, convicted assassin Yigal Amir showed no remorse about gunning down Israel's prime minister.The 25-year-old former law student told the Tel Aviv court in his final statement Wednesday that Rabin had to be killed because his efforts to make peace by giving up land to the Arabs were a calamity for the Jews.''Everything I did, I did for God, for the Torah of Israel, the people of Israel and the land of Israel,'' Amir said.On Nov. 4 Amir walked up to Rabin, reached between security men and shot him twice in the back with hollow-point bullets.

Attorneys for Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin asked for a verdict of manslaughter Sunday, saying that he only meant to disable the prime minister when he shot him in the back after a peace rally. But prosecutors asked that Yigil Amir be convicted of premeditated murder and sent to prison for life. Prosecutor Pnina Guy reminded the court that Amir smiled when he learned Rabin was dead, and she quoted Amir as saying: ''I did what I had to do.'' Amir, a former law student, did not talk or try to interrupt the proceedings, as he did earlier in the three-month trial.

Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin re-enacted scenes from the slaying in court Monday, smiling as he pointed a pistol and then was wrestled to the courtroom floor. Yigal Amir took an active role in his increasingly unusual defense Monday, the fourth day of testimony in his trial in the Nov. 4 killing of the prime minister. Amir has said he shot Rabin to keep him from giving parts of the West Bank to Palestinians. Amir asked the policeman who disarmed him after the shooting to re-enact the struggle and questioned other prosecution witnesses, who included the bodyguard wounded trying to save Rabin from Amir's bullets.

The Kite Runner is an elegiac personal tragedy, a movie about guilt, shame, loyalty and friendship. A tender redemptive tale of two boys who grow up to be men with one taking much longer to "grow up" than the other, it reminds us that guilt endures even when relationships don't. But if there is any claim to "epic" in this film based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini, it is its vivid depiction of the consequences of "Islamo-fascism," a before-and-after picture of Afghanistan that shows a land where civilization came to an abrupt end. You'd swear this Afghan Killing Fields was science fiction if we hadn't actually watched it happen.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- A U.S. citizen who was caught fleeing the recent fighting in Somalia was questioned about links to al-Qaeda by the FBI in Kenya, then sent back to the war-ravaged country, where he was turned over to Ethiopian forces. Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, is now imprisoned in Ethiopia, where the State Department's 2006 human-rights report says "conditions in prisons and pre-trial detention centers remain very poor." The fact that Meshal has landed in an Ethiopian prison without any semblance of due process raises questions about what role the rule of law plays in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- An Iranian who spent nearly three years in sanctuary in a Vancouver church before being arrested during the weekend was unexpectedly granted permanent-resident status by Canadian officials Monday. The Canada Border Services Agency released Amir Kazemian, 41, from custody after officials granted him residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

JERUSALEM -- The Israeli Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin will be allowed to father children through artificial insemination. Yigal Amir and his wife had petitioned the court for the right to bear children. Amir, serving a life sentence without parole for the 1995 assassination, married Larissa Trimbobler by proxy in 2004.

Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation, by Alan Gurney (Norton, $22.95, 320 pages): Compass clearly was written to cash in on readers' fascination with ingenious devices that have altered human existence, but it is far more limited in scope than Amir Aczel's The Riddle of the Compass, and less informative. It also is a lousy book: sloppily written, turgid in its efforts to explain complicated scientific matters and almost breathtakingly provincial in its British focus.

ISRAEL AMIR, 99, Israeli military commander: Amir, the first commander of the Israeli air force, died Friday in Tel Aviv. Amir was born Israel Zblodovsky in Russia in 1903, and in 1923 he immigrated to what was then British-ruled Palestine. He soon joined the Hagana underground, the forerunner of the Israeli army. In 1942, after holding a number of field commands, Amir was made head of the Hagana's information department, which evolved into the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies.

For the first time since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin three weeks ago, police interrogated two rabbis Sunday on the suspicion that they had issued religious rulings condemning the prime minister to death.The questioning followed reports that the confessed killer, Yigal Amir, might have acted after receiving a rabbinic sanction. Amir, an Orthodox Jewish student, has asserted that he followed religious law in shooting Rabin on Nov. 4, but insists that he acted on his own.Like other militant Orthodox opponents of the government, Amir called Rabin a ''pursuer,'' a term taken from Jewish law to describe an assailant who can be killed if he poses a mortal threat.

The Kite Runner is an elegiac, redemptive tale of two Afghan boys torn apart by cowardice, brought back together by honor. If there is any claim to "epic" in this film of Khaled Hosseini's novel, it is its vivid depiction of "Islamo-fascism," a before-and-after picture of Afghanistan that shows a land where civilization came to an abrupt end. Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi) is a wealthy, sensitive boy who likes to "make up stories." Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada, an open-faced wonder) is the son of a family servant and Amir's best friend, his protector.

Women at the U.S. Open are wearing everything from Serena Williams' black self-titled "cat suit" to Anna Kournikova's hip and midriff-revealing two-piece outfit. But when Tommy Haas, the No. 3 player on the men's tour, came to play his match Wednesday in a sleeveless shirt, he was told to change. Why? "It's not customary attire," said head referee Brian Earley, who was called to the Grandstand Court to make the call. Article III C in the Grand Slam Rule Book, under the sub-category of dress and equipment, says: "Every player shall dress and present himself for play in a professional manner.

QUETTA, Pakistan -- A senior Taliban official said Sunday that an American was arrested two weeks ago in southern Afghanistan and later died in custody of natural causes. John Bolton of California entered Afghanistan as a relief worker and was arrested at Spinboldak near the border with Pakistan, Taliban official Amir Khan Muttaqi said by telephone from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.